


ginseng & pine

by wraithes



Category: Red Dead Redemption
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Sickfic, Soft Spoilers (?)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-24
Updated: 2018-11-24
Packaged: 2019-08-28 12:33:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16723500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wraithes/pseuds/wraithes
Summary: with flesh against flesh, there's no better time to realize that this all has an expiration date.





	ginseng & pine

“I love you, Arthur Morgan.” 

 

The words reached him as the taste of smoke and sweat flourished in his mouth, chapped lips mapping across the flesh that welcomed him once more, a hand at the back of his neck to guide him home. Stubble aroused a scarf of goosebumps and a familiar sigh, one that sounded as if it had been wound up for weeks and released all at once - in some sense, that was exactly what it was. Arthur Morgan once swore he was a man incapable of tenderness, incapable of whatever it was he had found here, at the junction of neck and shoulder as he kissed at the taut muscle that had been plastered with the black strands of hair laid down with sweat.

 

“It just feels real good being here like this with you,” 

 

Charles beckoned him out of whatever trace he had fallen into, his face peeling back just enough to catch the man before him in the flickering low light of the hotel room. He thought to himself how good the man looked here, donned with the flashes of gold light and bathed in the smell of bath salts, aftershave, and sex. A calloused hand moved over the contours of the other with all of the care and attention as he had used their first time - sweeping over the width of his chest, cradling the rise and fall of his ribcage, sinking to the hips that pressed up to meet his palm. 

 

“Ain’t that ever gonna get old, saying that kind of stuff to me? ” 

 

He pretended to hate it, his lips twitching at the corners as he found the other’s thigh, rubbing tight circles with the pad of his thumb. It came as some sort of world-shattering surprise when he found out this is just how the stoic, no-nonsense outlaw liked it - Charles liked it soft, attentive, narrowed in like nothing else in the world mattered. Arthur was caught off guard the first time when the two of them collided with all of the fire and heat of spontaneous combustion and the man had the nerve to demand ‘slow down.’ The memory was vibrant and safe, distant now more than ever as their bodies sat tired and glazed with sweat in the wake of the worst bad luck either of them had known. The end of the rope, that’s where Arthur liked to think their bodies were, dangling right above the abyss. His lungs burned with that familiar and frightening sense of suffocation at just the thought. 

 

“No,” Charles breathed, tilting his head back against the sheets to stare at the water stained ceiling, “no, Arthur, it won’t ever get old. I’ll keep saying it until I feel as if we’re no longer making up for lost time.” 

 

“Before it was we were living on borrowed time, now you’re tellin’ me we’re makin’ up for lost time?” 

 

“You have to be some sort of idiot to think it can’t be both, Morgan.” 

 

He sealed that one with a kiss, harder than perhaps either of them had bargained for. Their mouths moved with all of the heat of teeth and tongue, soft espousals of pleasure falling into the back of each other’s throats with quiet moans. Arthur liked it better here, their sad sort of paradise hidden from the realities of murder, corruption, the seemingly never-ending burial sites left in their wake, the precipice of madness itself closing in on the both of them. “Borrowed time” was more likely than “lost time,” no matter how long the two had avoided their consummation of the interest and attraction that had brewed between them for months - two men on the run from the law, one stricken sick with blood pooling in the whites of his eyes and a burning flame in his lungs, the other one a man who had lost all that he had and had spent most of his time chasing ghosts - they would always be living on “borrowed time.” His jaw tightened at the thought, though he wasn’t willing to argue with Charles’ romantic inclinations. At last, the need to be torn apart with the sound of a ragged, rough cough pulled him back from the other man. Tears welled up in his bloodshot eyes as his chest constricted, the rattling sound of death somehow more apparent when the thinness of his bare chest was visible before the other man. The taste of blood painted the back of his teeth before he could swallow it down, a sad sort of laugh crawling up from his throat as he wheezed to catch his breath. 

 

“Arthur,” Charles scolded, “when are you going to cut the bullshit and tell me what’s wrong with you. Things just haven’t been right ever since you came back from Guarma. I know it’s killing you, whatever it is, your eyes are as red as the devil and I can feel just about each bone of your’s whenever we do this - each damn rib. ” 

 

“You sure do know how to make a fella feel real good.” 

 

“You sure do know how to lie to the ones you claim to love.” 

 

“Never said I didn’t - you’re the damn fool for thinkin’ I would be above it.” 

 

Silence draped over them like the white linen sheet of death, their faces settled in forlorn expressions as if preemptively mourning whatever unseen loss was hurtling towards them. Charles sighed then, breaking their stupid mutual stubbornness as he pushed forward with the soft pressure of his palms against the other’s chest - he had noticed weeks prior when the muscles he was so used to had started to give way to bone and flesh, kissed with blotches of purple and red. At first he had attributed it to the stress of all the death and relocating that had been forced upon them - but then came the cough and the handkerchief stained with blood that Arthur had tried to keep discreetly tucked in his satchel. Charles pushed and shifted in the sheets until he had Arthur pinned beneath him, their naked bodies wound up against one another and vulnerable in the flickering light of the oil lamps and sliced with the pale moonlight that poured through the shutters. Arthur looked like bodies he had seen dead in the snow, kissed with bruises and pale, cold to the touch. Charles’ fingers curled in a clawing motion into the thick curls of the other’s chest hair, breathing in a cold intake of breath as he watched how the other moved upwards into the touch. 

 

“It will kill me too, won’t it?” The words slit through the warmth between them with a burning sensation, as if each of them had drawn the blade across their tongues. 

 

“It just might,” Arthur Morgan had become tender, but he would never admit to forgoing his innate, selfish nature. It hurt him to think about - cursing the other with illness so that he could find pleasure in what little time he, himself, had left. 

 

“Well,” Charles felt his jaw tighten as he spread his legs in a straddle across the other’s thin hips, watching as Arthur gazed at him with that familiar expression - the one that begged him to forgive, pleading him to stay right here for as long as time would allow, “I don’t see much use in living a life where we can’t ride up into some mountains somewhere, or go wading in some river, or watch the sunset from the peak of some gorge.” 

 

“Now dammit, don’t go talkin’ like that, all this ‘I can’t live without you’ bullshit,”

 

“You know as well as I do that it isn’t bullshit, it’s the truth,”

 

“You’re a damn fool if you think life without me can’t be just as grand and thrilling,”

 

“What if it were me?” 

 

Arthur heaved a ragged sigh, squeezing out a cough at the end as he let his head fall back into the pillows, shaking his head all the while. 

 

“You’re upset because you know that I’m right,” Charles reached lower then, running the tips of his fingers over the trail of hair that ran from navel to the man’s groin, dark and thick as it hugged the base of his length. 

 

“Don’t you ever get tired of that, either, being right all the damn time?” 

 

Laughter found them quiet and calm in the hotel room then, the air around them shifting as Arthur reached up to take hold of the other man at the back of his neck, fingers twisting in the thick locks of black that were still wet from the shared bath. He took what strength he had left at the end of a tiresome day and pushed himself upwards, dragging parted lips in small kisses across Charles’ collarbone. Arthur liked to hear him whimper, that soft noise that ripped through his lungs and shook him with a shiver - he seized the moment then, sucking the other’s skin with enough force to speak what his words couldn’t, each bruise leaving a trail of _‘mine, mine, mine.’_

 

It was moments like this that made it all worth it to Charles - the nails that dug into his flesh, the trembling legs beneath him that thrusted upwards with the desire to be acknowledged, the hands that twisted in his hair that fell like a dark curtain over his face when he leaned forward then, rolling himself over the man’s length as it laid against his stomach, supple and waiting. He would die again and again for this, each inch of Arthur Morgan set on a collision course for him, their bodies crashing in search of whatever reprieve they could find. Each time could have been the last time, and that’s what made the stakes higher, that’s what made all of this a  _ need _ rather than a  _ want.  _

 

Arthur Morgan needed Charles Smith just as Charles needed him right back. He needed each inch of the dark warmth of his insides as he pushed into him for the second time that night, he needed each hitched breath and whimpered utterance of his name, he needed the light that reflected in the dark brown eyes set into the face that had contorted into a pleasured resolve. More important than that, he needed the man who feared nothing, who could take a legion of men on his own but still invited him along for the ride, who had been to hell and back and knew what it meant to survive, who reminded him that maybe he wasn’t such a bad man, after all. It hurt to think of letting it all go - the times they had snuck into one another’s bed rolls, the times that they had cooked for each other alone in the wilderness, the one time he got  _ Charles fuckin’ Smith  _ to dance with him near the fire of the camp when no one else was watching. Each thrust of his hips and each shudder of the other man’s body brought with it another memory singed at the edges with that burning reminder that it would all be over soon enough - the times they had talked about running away together, the times Charles had shaved his face clean without a knick of scratch, the times he was permitted to sit in the other’s company while he moved his lips over the harmonica with such skill. He wanted this night to drone on forever, their bodies stitched together so close he had started to forget where he ended and the other began. 

 

It continued on like that for longer than either of them had expected, their bodies moving in slow tandem to accommodate Arthur’s weaknesses and Charles’ desire to get their money’s worth out of the hotel room. Fleeting moments came and went where they would do nothing but stare at one another, soaking up the images of two bodies so unlike one another but tied together so effortlessly. Charles wanted to tell him that if he were to die tonight, he would have died the most loved man this side of the Mississippi, though he elected to bite his tongue instead. Rather, he cradled Arthur’s face as he rode him, keeping him in place and putting in most of the work once he had heard the other man start to breathe heavier than usual, “you have nothing to worry about,” he whispered, rocking into him with a gentle expression of sincerity, “I’m not going anywhere.” 

 

Arthur did not last more than a few moments after that, finishing himself off inside that tight darkness with a guttural noise as unrestrained as the hack that followed, Charles following soon after as his whole frame went tense before the final, cathartic release. He sat there in awe of what they had become, two men who took a risk on something that was both stupid and instinctual, all while staring down the barrel of a loaded gun called fate. 

 

“You’re just about all I have left,” Arthur confessed once he could breathe again, eyes almost frantic as he held the man there above him, his grip tight on his wrists then, as if to ensure he really would not be sneaking off in the dead of night or vanishing into thin air when he needed him most. 

 

“And you’re just about all I’ve ever had, Arthur Morgan. So don’t let go so soon,” it was the closest to desperate and maybe even scared that Arthur had heard from the other, “if you can help it.” 

 

He wondered then if Charles would cry when he did let go, if he’d weep and visit wherever it was he was laid to rest, if the other’s would question why he had died with the beaded rope necklace he had been gifted from his forever-secret lover or why it was he kept a handful of hand written notes from him tucked in the breast pocket of his favorite shirt. It was hard to look at him then, his thin fingers moving over where the strong heartbeat pressed against his touch. 

He knew better to think of death, not when he was in the presence of someone so alive and so electric. Arthur also knew better than to promise him time that he wasn’t sure he had, or to talk about a future when it seemed to be nothing more than a darkness closing in on them. All he had was what he could offer now, his hands softening their grip and his mouth falling slack with enamored panting, staring upwards as if in the presence of god himself. This was it, his beginning and his end. 

 

“Damn if I don’t love you too, Charles Smith.” 

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr / twitter @ injuuns


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